Friday, April 05, 2013

Blood Bowl: Petty Cash

Earlier this week I played a game on FumBBL where my team was 80k above the opposing team in TV. This would have allowed my opponent to get a bloodwiser babe for 50k for the match, but the extra 30k was going to be wasted. He tossed in some extra cash he had lying around in order to get more stuff. I expected him to throw in 20k to round things off to an even 100k but he ended up throwing in a full 100k, which he then used for 2 bloodwiser babes and I got nothing from it. This surprised me for a few reasons. Why didn't he just put in 20k? Why didn't he spend the full 180k? Why didn't I also get to spend the 100k he threw in? Why did he throw away 100k in a pickup game? Clearly it was research time!

It turns out there's a single, simple explanation for most of those questions. Any petty cash you add to your team from your treasury before a match gets added immediately to your TV for the match. Only after both coaches get a chance to add petty cash are the new TVs compared with bonus inducement money given out for the difference.

So, for example, if my TV is 1800 and my opponent's is 1720 the difference is 80k and he'll get 80k worth of inducements if nothing happens. Should he throw in 20k in petty cash his TV will be 1740 and the difference will now be only 60k. He'll still end up with 80k to spend (60k for free and 20k from petty cash) but this has the same impact on the game and costs his team 20k in actual cash on hand. If he throws in a full 100k then his TV becomes 1820 and I actually get a free 20k from the difference. He gets the full 100k that he threw in.

The higher TV team can toss in some petty cash too, and that will directly give both players inducements. This is because adding to the bigger number will grow the gap between the two numbers by the same amount. This can still make sense (maybe you want a bribe to keep your Deathroller on the field) but it does give your opponent a bunch of free stuff as well.

Before doing this research I'd decided to fire my Deathroller, buy two linemen, and run at even TV with Mike. But now there are actually some more options worth considering...

- Keep the Deathroller, but toss in 100k in petty cash to get a bribe. This would give Mike 120k in inducements himself, which is probably 2 bloodwiser babes. This seems like a blowout for him, since I can't imagine I can get him below 11 people per drive given the size of his bench and how likely his guys will wake up from KO with 2 babes.
- Fire the Deathroller, buy nothing, and toss in 150k in petty cash. This would give Mike 10k in inducements so he gets nothing at all. I get a wizard. Wizards are awesome. If I was an elf team I'd look at a wizard as being worth a 2 point swing. (Knock down his ball carrier and score myself instead of him scoring.) As dwarves it's probably not quite as good, but I can definitely envision the game ending 1-0 if I have a wizard. Fry his ball carrier on his drive and just stand around the ball with a bunch of guard dudes until time runs out. Then score on my drive.
- Fire the Deathroller, buy a single guy, and toss in 80k in petty cash. This again gives Mike 10k in inducements so he gets nothing at all. I get a 13th body and 2 agility potions. Assuming at least one of them works I'd have a 4 agility sure hands dude and be in a pretty good way as far as getting an offense going I think.

Looking ahead, if I somehow manage to win this game against the killer Norse, my next game would be against a low TV Skaven team. My feeling is against Skaven that a Deathroller is a colossal waste of space, and that guys 13 and 14 are also bad. Is Skaven really going to take out multiple high armour dwarves? I think I'm thrilled if he's going to get into the brawl that allows that to happen! Chances are strong that the 13th and 14th guys never see the pitch at all, and only serve to give the Skaven team a wizard. Which, again, is likely a 2 point swing for fast team vs dwarves. So even if I decide to buy 2 dudes for the game against the Norse, I'm pretty sure I have to fire them immediately afterwards. (Unless maybe the Norse make a bunch of my guys miss next game?) Or maybe my TV will be so far ahead that Skaven are getting the wizard anyway and I can use the extra guys to foul his gutter runners and hope to win that way?

I'm going to have mull things over more before the game today (6pm, be there to spectate or be square) but I'm now leaning towards firing the Deathroller and chucking in 150k for a wizard. And hey, maybe Mike counters by firing some of his guys and we end up playing a wizardless game with small rosters. That's probably really good for dwarves, too!